Archive for April, 2007

Hedi Slimane is a fashion designer and is friends with Beck. He was the Dior Homme designer that Beck did the absolutely amazing Dior Theme for. Slimane has a photo diary on his site and today’s entry has a number of photos of Beck. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing. (Make sure to check the second page, too.)

JMJ has posted a new blog on his MySpace and his web site. Of note for Beck fans:

Just back from Beck Japan/Australia run, probably the final leg of touring in support of “The Information”. It was pretty fantastic. Lots of rocking, good meals, riding bikes, seeing temples, shaking hands, taking photos, going to clubs, and long flights. Got some super cute and bizarre presents for my Zelly. Good to be home, but it’s always sad to me to put the final button on an album cycle. I always wish there was more….

Starting on new Beck album in fairly short order…in fact, I’d say we’ve actually already begun a while ago.

Hi, so I thought one fun thing to do for Paper Tiger would be to include photos of different places that might be related to Beck. Since I live in Los Angeles, I could go take them on a spare day sometime. I’m thinking of things like, the address listed on the “MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack” single, or Al’s Bar, or Zankou Chicken. Got any other ideas? (Don’t say his house.)

For those of you with dimeadozen accounts, somebody has uploaded the April 8 show. It’s not actually working I don’t think, because I think dime might be having some database issues, but hopefully that’ll be resolved soon. Just go to dimeadozen.org and search for Beck, and you should see it. If you don’t have an account, new ones can be tricky to get, you gotta be on your toes.

The NME is reporting that Beck will be included on a new charity compilation due out in May. His contribution will be Black Tambourine.

Kaiser Chiefs, Weezer and Beck are among the artists to feature on a brand new compilation CD put together by Lily Allen collaborator Mark Ronson.

Wolfmother, Ryan Adams and Scissors Sisters are also included on the CD, which is the first of a series of compilations put together by Ronson for Hard Rock Hotels.

The album which is released in May will also donate a dollar from each sale to the Water For Life charity an initiative from artist Jay-Z with the mission to bring clean drinking water throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

So the Japan tour is over now. WuCu plays tonight (at the Echo, I believe). All is good.

We posted some setlists from the Japan tour earlier and they looked mighty fine. I was going to post some more, but to be honest they were all fairly similar. If you want to check them out, they will eventually make their way onto Hijacked Flavors, so keep checking back there.

After all our whining and hoping, we were lucky enough to get a recording of one show so far, 2007-04-16! The extra awesome news is that Beck played Time Bomb at that show and, in this blogger’s opinion, it’s awesome. The show actually seemed like a lot of fun. To me it seemed like Beck was more into it than he has been more recently in North America, but that might just be me projecting my own excitement onto the recording.

There was also that big art show we mentioned, which seems to have gone down pretty well. I understand that a whole buttload of people showed up, Beck signed autographs (check out Hambeck’s sweet autographs), and good fun was had by all. Plus, you can’t really go wrong with large framed pictures of horses humping, can you? I noticed in some pictures from the art show that there seemed to be an accompanying book that maybe was sold or given out there. (I can’t find the pictures now, but if I find them I’ll update this post with the links.) I haven’t really heard anything about this, but I’m definitely interested in it. If anybody has more info about this book, please share it in the comments.

Let’s see, what else…Beck seemed to have a really good time tooling around Japan, and he took a lot of mighty nice photos for his beck.com photo diary. I again recommend you check those out. That’s about it I guess. Sorry this post is kinda half-assed.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kristen for posting the link to azukibean’s Flickr stream, where I had originally seen the photos of the book described above (1, 2, 3, 4).

Got a newsletter from Beck’s old keyboardist, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (Manthing / Malibu / Shotgun), via his website. He mentioned some very cool recordings he did with Beck, co-starring Roger’s Jellyfish bandmate, Jason Falkner (who is on Sea Change and Info) and a few others. Here’s what he wrote:

The most recent and biggest surprise of late was getting a call from Beck recently to help do some “direct to disc” recording. Those invited to help out were, Justin, Jason Falkner and special guests Jamie Lidell and Mocky. Direct to disc recording involves all of the musicians performing simultaneously (no overdubbing) live in a studio environment. The audio signal is then sent to an antiquated machine that literally cuts the signal onto vinyl instantly there on the spot. The objective being and incredibly enhanced recording signal and sound quality not to mention the “live” element of the performance being captured. In other words, no second takes for the musicians. Get it right and get it right now! Needless to say this was a new and exhilarating challenge that we all welcomed. It really forced some interesting spontaneity to emerge from this great ensemble of musicians. No word yet as to how Beck plans on using the material garnered from these dates.

In another recent interview while in Australia, it was reported that Beck “shelved his idea of an album of two-minute pop songs to highlight society’s ever-dwindling attention span for a project of “more inconvenience”.” Beck explained, ”It’s almost a reaction against everything having to be so pocket-sized, quick and easy and downloadable. It makes me want to make something that doesn’t fit in through the front door, that you have to break a wall to get into the house.”

But then, Beck also told the Japan Times he wanted to do a Elliott-Smith-style-acoustic album too.

There are plenty of unofficial / fan remixes of Beck tracks out there, and they are often incredibly terrible. Sometimes, though, you get a pleasant surprise; two of my favourites* in the past were by Skew, who’s done remixes of Emergency Exit and Broken Drum.

This morning I stumbled across a YouTube video for a New Round remix by Skew. The video is underwhelming – just a few photographs in a loop. Once again, though, the remix is really good and I recommend you all pick it up here on Skew’s site.

Hey FOLX. Long time no post. We’ve got a report from Beck’s latest show over at the 365 days off blog. I’ve got the setlist posted below for those of you (like me) who can’t read the Japanese review. The google translator is a fun game though. ;-)

Anyways, I have been watching the setlists from the last few shows in Japan and Australia, and I have to say this one may be my favorite as of yet. Seems like a first time performance of This Girl That I Know! Whoot. Also, Time Bomb again showed its beautiful face (I saw him perform this in Austin last year and remember being blown away. Let’s hope a recording surfaces). Soldier Jane in there (another great live song) and also some Mixed Bizness. Overall, not a bad set. Can’t wait to hear some recordings to validate these few shows that look good on paper (tiger…sorry couldn’t resist).